When U.S. military personnel go into battle, they rely on sophisticated and efficient weaponry to defeat enemy forces. In an effort to reduce the number of causalities suffered by U.S. forces, modern weapons are designed to deliver payloads from great distances with uncanny accuracy. Examples of these modern weapons include guided missiles, guided bombs dropped from aircraft including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and guided artillery shells. The primary destructive power of these weapons is provided by the warheads they carry.
Warheads are used in a variety of military applications to deliver a distribution of high-velocity fragments across a target area. The penetration effectiveness of a fragment when it strikes a target is directly proportional to the fragment's kinetic energy. The fragments kinetic energy is derived from an explosion. An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy accompanied by the generation of high temperatures and the release expanding gases. Supersonic explosions created by high explosives are known as detonations and travel via supersonic shock waves.